


A Sister's Hospitality

by queenbookwench



Category: Frederica - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:25:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbookwench/pseuds/queenbookwench
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Kentmere is settling into married life with her husband and new daughter, when her domestic peace is disturbed by her young, tempestuous brother.  </p><p>But what has brought Vernon rushing out to the country?</p><p>(a speculative prequel to Heyer's <i>Frederica</i>, inspired by a couple of lines from canon and my personal fanon that Vernon Dauntry was an intense young man, not totally dissimilar to Jessamy Merrivale)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sister's Hospitality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ingreatwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingreatwaters/gifts).



> Many thanks to Jen and LionessElise for brainstorming, cheerleading and encouragement, and to Rabidsamfan and their sibling for the Heyer beta. Any infelicities or anachronisms are entirely my own!
> 
> Ingreatwaters, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it and re-immersing myself in _Frederica_ to do so.

It was decidedly not a dark and stormy night; it was a pleasant afternoon in mid-May. Even so, Eliza was not expecting callers, having only just emerged from her confinement with baby Caroline. Thus, when Fenwick appeared in the doorway of the salon and announced, “The Honorable Vernon Dauntry to see you, madam,” her confusion was quite pardonable.

“My brother? What on earth could have induced him to travel all this way! And with no notice, too. How provoking!”

“Quite." Fenwick replied. "Shall I tell him you are indisposed?”

Eliza let out a gusty sigh. Her brother could be every bit as provoking as their father, but she had once told Vernon that she would always be at home to him, barring the direst emergency, and he had never once taken advantage of her hospitality until now. A poor sister she would be to send him off the minute he did so!

“No, Fenwick, let him know I’ll be down in a moment, and have Cook send up some tea and biscuits. I’ll have Shawcross assist me into something minimally suitable.”

When she descended, Vernon was drumming his fingers restlessly on the arm of the chair. He was elegantly dressed as always, but his face was haggard and drawn, and his boots bore the marks of hard riding. Her brother was normally the picture of cool, imperturbable _sangfroid_ , daunting any number of lesser mortals with his poise and address. What could have upset him so?

She found herself surprised by a rather maternal urge to rush over and embrace him. No, such demonstrative displays of affection had never been the Dauntry family custom, and she didn’t wish to set his back up. Directness, as usual, would be her way.

“Vernon, dear, what brings you out to Gloucestershire, and in such tearing haste? Is all well at home?”

“Eliza,” he said, and then stopped, heaving a great sigh. “Sister mine, I do hope you were in earnest in your invitations earlier this year. I find I cannot bear the metropolis a moment longer, nor do I wish to go to Alver and be harassed by Father’s steward. I need to a place to rusticate for awhile, where no one wishes anything from me.”

“Of course I was in earnest! You are always welcome in my home, and John would say the same; indeed he has done. I fear you may want for amusement, though, as I am only just risen from my confinement, and John is much occupied with supervising the spring calving. It will be far from the lively scene you are accustomed to in town.”

“It’s not amusement I require, merely escape.”

“What, pray tell, are you escaping from?”

Eliza was used to her brother’s ways, and ordinarily he appeared a lively and confident young man, unconcerned with the opinions of others to a degree that some considered hubris. The look he turned in her direction was beseeching, and full of such hurt and loss that she caught her breath.

“Pray don’t press me, Eliza, or remonstrate with me. I simply...I cannot speak of it just now. It’s nothing that need concern you; the family is well enough.”

“I don’t wish to pry, truly, and in faith I will not. Only you are so clearly unhappy, and I am actually very fond of you, believe me or no. I do not like to see you so distressed.”

“I do believe you; I am not such a darkened cynic as all that, though...it is difficult, just now, to believe in any sort of good will. Perhaps you only offer me your hospitality as a way of seeking some future benefit for yourself.” He gave an ugly laugh.

Eliza fixed him with a dark, steely look, “Take that back, Vernon, and pray do not confuse me with Augusta or Louisa or some importuning member of our extended relations. I have all I need, and indeed all I want, right here with John and my little Caroline. All I wish from you is your honest regard, and if you cannot tender that, then I may well have to retract my hospitality after all.”

He rose from the sofa and took her hands in his own, kneeling at her side. “I _am_ sorry, Eliza. We have always shared a sharpness of wit, but I fear mine has grown rather too cutting of late. I didn’t mean it, not truly. It is only--oh, Eliza, it is too unjust!" His voice rose and shook with passion. "I know not whom to trust, and so trust no one."For a moment, she thought he might weep openly, but he visibly collected himself and, with great effort regained something of his former self-possession.

“I know all too well that you are rarely wont to apologize to anyone, so I’ll accept. Have a care when John is nearby, though; he’s an earnest sort, as you know, and much disinclined to take anything he’d consider an insult to me in good part.”  She pressed his hands gently with her own.

“I know well how formidable Mr Kentmere can be when his affections are engaged. I do remember his courtship of you, after all; it’s not many men that can stampede our father as easily as a Thoroughbred runs the downs at Newmarket.”

Eliza laughed a little at the memory of the family rows that had attended their courtship; it was easier to do so now that she and John were no longer newlyweds and had a child of their own.

Though he considered himself a man about town at twenty, Eliza noted that there was still enough of the boy left in Vernon to perk up noticeably at the arrival of a tray piled high with Cook’s excellent biscuits and an accompanying teapot. They had just polished off the afternoon repast when Hannah, the junior housemaid, came down from the nursery with a message, as Eliza had asked Nurse to tell her when Caroline had woken from her nap.

To her brother, she pleaded a mother’s duty and summoned Fenwick to guide him to the guest suite. As she held and nursed her little girl, she couldn’t help thinking of her own childhood, of the distance and lack of affection with which she and Vernon, as well as their older sisters, had been raised.

The others seemed to think this the natural order of things; Eliza, however, determined that her Caroline, and the others that would come, should not lack for affection nor be raised in a household of rigid formality. In this, she knew that she could count her John as an absolute ally. His frank warmth of spirit had been the very quality that drew her to him, and for it she had been willing to leave the excitement of the city for the very different adventures of life as a country gentlewoman.

She hoped that her brother would find some peace here at Kentmere. And indeed, he seemed to. He appeared at meals and was pleasant, even jovial, with John and herself; at all other times, he disappeared for long rides through the countryside, or else retired to the study to ponder she knew not what.

After a few days, he asked if she might walk with him in the garden for a short while after luncheon. Eliza agreed willingly, still finding the fresh air delightful after her long winter’s confinement.

“Eliza,” Vernon said, “you are as good as your word, always, and I don’t know how to tell you how grateful I am.”

“I think you have just done so!” she said with a laugh.

“It’s merely--oh, Eliza, I know that I’m often selfish and wild and everything else people say of me. But it means a great deal that you have allowed me to come here and impose on you and yours, and haven’t reproved, or judged, or even questioned. It is a true gift.”

She hardly knew how to respond to such an impassioned declaration, so she decided to do what she had longed to do since his arrival--simply embrace him. He held himself stiffly in her arms for a moment, then relaxed and leaned into her.

“I find,” he said, “that I want to tell you everything.”

“Then of course you may,” Eliza replied. “There is nothing so urgent in my appointment book that we cannot remain here a while.”

“There was a girl,” he began. “Marianne...Lady Marianne Daventer. She was so beautiful, with wit to match her face. I believed that we had formed an understanding; she declared that she felt as passionately as I, but insisted we keep our attachment secret for a time. Finally, I asked her to be my wife, and offered to go to her family as soon as may be.

She laughed and declared that I was callow boy, worth a passing flirtation but chiefly attractive for my fortune. She had found another, with an even greater fortune than my own and a loftier title besides, and no longer wished my company. Their engagement was announced shortly thereafter, and I found I knew the man.

He is a perfect block, Eliza! I am persuaded that she never cared for me at all.”

“Oh, Vernon, I _am_ sorry.” Eliza felt her own sympathetic words to be dreadfully feeble.

“No more talk of love for me,” her brother replied. “How will I ever know that I am treasured for myself, and not my name or my fortune? If everything is to be a transaction, one might as well be honest about it, and purchase one’s favours in advance.”

“Well, I love you dearly, if you must know, and I don’t think you ought to abandon hope so easily.”

“You and your John are among the world’s fortunate few, and it’s to your credit that you wish everyone in the same state. The world’s not such a fair place, though, and I’ve hidden away here long enough. I’ll have to show my face in town again, or the world will move on without me!”

Vernon took his leave the next morning, and he and Eliza were only rarely in each other’s orbit thereafter. She occupied herself with the daily pleasures of family life, and on the rare occasions that she saw her brother, a careless (and rather callous) amusement with the world and an equally constant determination to disoblige anyone who thought themselves owed a consideration from him--those were his permanent state.

So when Augusta and Louisa wrote to her in high dudgeon, complaining of his championing of some poor relations, she couldn’t help but be curious. She was wearied from nursing the children, and longed for fresh scenes and excitement now that they were better.

And besides, she needed a new hat.  It was time to pay her brother a visit.


End file.
